


A History of Clouds

by winterhill



Category: My Hero Academia: Vigilantes (Manga) (2018)
Genre: Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead-centric, Bittersweet, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Past Character Death, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28126101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterhill/pseuds/winterhill
Summary: Aizawa has known his clouds since he was a teenager; befriending a boy with a cloud quirk tends to do that. Five times Shouta watched the sky and thought about someone he’d lost.
Relationships: Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead & Shirakumo Oboro
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A History of Clouds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shoutasglock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoutasglock/gifts).



1\. Cumulus 

Aizawa liked the city, because the towering buildings and narrow alleys blocked out enough of the sky; often enough, the sky sat overhead like a ceiling, blurred out and soft, no distinct features at all. Stratus, altostratus. Or smog, to be brutally honest. Sometimes, though, cumulus clouds piled above the buildings, fat and complacent, unaware that a change of temperature or pressure could mean they ballooned into the great anvils of a storm. Unaware that they’d rain out, and fade away. 

He swung gracefully up onto a roof, and let his capture weapon re-wind around his shoulders. He felt naked without it these days; he’d started sleeping in a zip-up sleeping bag, just to replicate the sensation of gentle constriction around his shoulders, something holding him together but doing no harm. 

The clouds today were soft, puffy, overblown things. The dangerous part of his brain, the part that sometimes wondered what would happen if he were to jump from a building without lifting a giant loop of carbon-fibre to catch himself, almost wanted to see how soft they were. He almost wanted to try to reach them, and see if they were like he remembered -- warm, almost cosy. They’d trained for that -- using clouds as stepping stones to increase his range, his movement not restricted even if there weren’t handy buildings around to hook onto. 

That was done, though. 

Now he had the city, with its maze of useful alleys and nooks, and a sky he didn’t have to look at unless he was feeling particularly masochistic. He knew it was illogical to feel this way about the fucking sky, of all things, but he couldn’t help it sometimes. 

It would have been nice if the clouds had had the courtesy to darken, but of course, they didn’t. They billowed and pinkened like a Renaissance painting, going apricot and gold against the rich blue of the sky and the reds of the sunset, finally turning to fire opals and then dull grey as the sun slid below the horizon. 

He lit a cigarette as civil twilight, then nautical twilight fell, and the city lights woke. He wouldn’t wait on the roof until the pure dark of night -- there was yet more twilight, and villains were often crepuscular, striking at the commuters at each end of the working day. He stretched, looking up, and made a gesture he hadn’t made for years -- not quite a secret salute, but not quite not a secret salute, either. 

The clouds were indifferent. He hadn’t expected anything otherwise. 

Sighing, Shouta pulled on his goggles, looped the capture scarf around his hands, and leaped off the building, catching himself on a fire escape and for a brief moment, flying. Time to go to work. 

2\. Cirrus 

Clear skies and everything coming up Aizawa. Well, almost clear, just thin wisps of cloud, barely visible against the deepening sky. He’d have to look hard to see them, flaring bright before fading against the glow of the city. 

He’d been going to go to Kayama and Yamada’s “Event”. He had. Even though he would have hated the people and the noise and the bouncing around on the stage, he’d been going to go, because Yamada had asked him, knowing he wouldn’t refuse unless -- well, unless, as had so conveniently happened, a villain attacked. 

What was his life, he considered, that a villain attack counted as a good thing? 

The villain lumbered through the streets awkwardly, weirdly like a tottering faun still learning how these-things-called-legs work. It listed drunkenly and he could hear it crying… _Pop, Pop, I’m late_ like the White Rabbit turned sinuous and dripping with eel-grease. It shoved people out of the way, ran them down, slimed them without even seeming to notice. Something was wrong. There was no villainous intent here. 

Aizawa hoped it -- _he_ \-- would give up once rolled up in twelve metres of capture weapon, but the slime was too much. The slime was also disgusting, and he’d have to send the weapon to the specialist drycleaners when this was over, and he hated getting it on his hands as he wove a net, but Aizawa had worked out what was going on by that stage, and he couldn’t in any good conscience let a literally slimy fan ambush Pop☆Step mid-performance. Particularly mid- _legitimate_ performance, which was something he wanted to encourage because a legitimate performance was a performance no heroes had to shut down for illegal quirk use. 

The eel looked as surprised as Aizawa was when it set out an electric shock that burned the capture weapon off it. At least the dry cleaners weren’t going to charge him an arm and a leg for slime, but they might charge for buffing out burn marks. He sighed, but the blood was thrumming in his veins, and he honestly wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else, or doing anything else. 

The electric burst had knocked out the lights, and knocked down the eel. It was fairly meek as he restrained it, and then sat beside it, leaning against the least slimy bit he could find. What would Shirakumo have done? He wasn’t sure anymore. Help it, he thought. He’d help. Shouta was the kind of person who would leave an umbrella for a kitten, to keep it out of the rain. Oboro was the kind who’d bring it with him, just to be sure it was dry. 

“You’re a fan, right?” he asked, for want of anything else to say that didn’t sound like a threat. 

“Pop,” said the eel, miserably. 

“You just knocked out the power to her gig,” he pointed out, and then he saw a huge, fat tear work its way out of one of those shiny black eel-eyes. 

“I didn’t mean to,” said the eel. “Sorry.” 

“What happened to you, kid?” asked Aizawa, but the eel had passed out for a bit. He could still hear it breathing, a wheezing, snuffling sound. He watched, and as he watched, he saw something he hadn’t expected -- a bee. 

Right. Something hardened in his jaw, in his chest, something angry and defiant and hurt on behalf of this enormous kid, who was still learning his body and had obviously -- obviously -- just wanted to see his idol. 

Aizawa couldn’t hear Mic from the roof, so he’d presumably taken a step back when things started to go south, just in case he had to leap into action. He got out his phone, texted _all good down here, let the show go on_ and got back _looks like the local kids have it covered,_ and then in the blackout dark, there was the tinny sound of Pop☆Step’s portable speaker, and the eel stirred. 

“Close your eyes and listen,” said Aizawa. 

The eel obeyed. “What’s going to happen to me?” 

“They’ll arrest you for going on a rampage,” said Aizawa, to the accompaniment of an indecipherable one-sided conversation from the roof. “I’ll tell them you sat quiet once you realised what was happening. I don’t think you knew you were rampaging, did you?” 

“Scared,” said the eel. “Never gonna get to see…” He broke off. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Unagisawa.” 

“Apt,” said Aizawa. “Don’t be scared, Unagisawa. When you get out, the city will find a place for you. It’s got a place for everyone, no matter your damage.” 

Part of him expected the kid to ask him what _his_ damage was. Part of him thought he might honestly answer. Up overhead, the lights flared and the hum of generators was quickly overridden by the sound of music. Mic’s kind of music, not Shouta’s. Still. Down on the street, police cars stained the night blue and red, and the kid was quickly cuffed, and-- 

“Actually--” said Aizawa. “Could you wait a few more minutes?” The cops looked at him, uncertain. “I’ll watch him until he’s calmed down.” The kid looked like all his birthdays had come at once; he’d worked it out. 

Up above, the light wash from the concert made the sky pink and purple and green. A girl’s voice rang out into the night air. Unagisawa beamed, brilliantly happy despite the cuffs, despite the police lights and quirk restraints. 

“Pop,” he breathed. 

Aizawa almost grinned. “They’re just getting to the good part,” he said, and meant it. 

3\. Nimbostratus 

“...please look after the kitty!” 

The kitten mewed, its tiny voice a plea above the sound of traffic. The Crawler held it in a box, and they both watched a young citizen bolt into the distance. Aizawa could have whipped the remainder of his capture weapon out to bring them back, make them take responsibility, but it’d be no life for a cat. 

Raindrops speckled the forearm of Aizawa’s jumpsuit, intermittent now, like a weirdly inconsistent spotted shirt and he shuddered. Rain. Just his luck to be stepping backward into the shelter of a shop awning with a kid who was only just in university and a kitten. He couldn’t look at the kitten, because if he looked at it, he’d want to rescue it, and living with Aizawa would also be no life for a cat. Kayama kept Sushi well because she had a few devoted sidekicks who counted “playing with the cat” and “scooping litter” as part of their duties. Aizawa had never wanted to look too closely at Kayama’s relationship with her sidekicks. He suspected that if he did, he’d be scarred for life.

He couldn’t even smoke. He was in public, in his hero gear, and Yamada would find out and then there’d be the guilt. He had enough guilt, and enough regrets, to last a hundred lifetimes, and he was only in his twenties. 

He watched the Crawler as they talked. The guy was blunt, which Shouta appreciated, because it was pleasing not being the most socially awkward person in a room. But he was cheerful to the point of near-saccharine optimism, and there was one grin he flashed that looked so much like Oboro’s that Shouta’s memories spiralled, the rain and the smell of water on tarmac, the city and even the damn cat sending him into painful remembrance. He hoped it didn’t show on his face, as the Crawler told him some stories about vigilantism that really, Shouta could take him in for, because apparently this kid hadn’t yet realised that cheerfully chatting to a Pro about all the illegal activities you've been up to was illogical at best, a terrible idea at worst.

 _Who the fuck looked after this kid?_ He voiced the question -- without the expletive -- and was unimpressed by the reply. _Who the fuck had looked after you at that age,_ his logical mind pointed out. Was it really any better? Aizawa and Yamada had been so fucked up for years after Shirakumo died, and Aizawa’d been the one to decide that he was going it alone. Yamada’d been prepared for an agency, a partnership, and now -- he was at Yuuei, with Nemuri, and Shouta was here, in the city in the rain, trying not to look at a cat in case he wanted to keep it. Not looking at the kid holding the cat either, and he wasn’t willing to touch those feelings from three streets away with a telekinetic quirk. 

The cat, in the way that small cats do, suddenly pounced out of its box and onto Aizawa’s arm, razor-sharp kitten claws digging into his skin as it climbed up onto his shoulder. 

“Whoa!” said the Crawler. “She must have gotten sick of you not paying her any attention.”

She was purring as she snuggled into his scarf. It was loud, and he felt the vibrations all along his collarbones -- purring in time with the thrumming of the rain on the pavement, and something inside him crumpled like it had that day when he’d turned to see that the speaker that had just been urging him on was a broken wreck; when he’d turned to see a toppled building, and a white sheet draped over a body, staining through to crimson, and broken goggles filling up with rainwater. 

“I’m sorry,” he said to the cat, lifting its tiny, furiously purring frame from his shoulder and putting it back in the box that the Crawler was still clutching. “I can’t save you.” 

It was one of the first things you learned as a pro -- you couldn’t always save everyone. Shouta had learned it younger than most, and now he saw it every day in kids like the Crawler -- in a district that the big names avoided, people acted to save one another, because if they didn’t, who would? In an ideal world, he thought, it wouldn’t matter what district you were in, if you were a hero. They’d all be taught that it was irrational to discriminate based on-- ah, he should check on the Hotta brothers. They’d got a new roommate, after all. 

“The rain stopped,” said the Crawler, stepping out into the street. 

It wasn’t clear yet, but it would be -- the street was shining with water, little iridescent puddles on the road, a feeling like the grime had been washed off for a soft minute after the downpour. It felt like shaking something off. 

“Anyway,” said Aizawa, turning to leave, not wanting to risk any more nostalgia, or whatever the fuck this feeling was. “Take care of that cat.” 

The kid followed him anyway. He supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything else. 

4\. Pyrocumulus 

The sheer devastation caused by a villain attack and the subsequent hero rescue was always an insurance nightmare, but never more so than when Endeavour was involved. Shouta stood on the edge of a downtown roof, watching. Part of the next building swayed dangerously, and windows had fallen from on high, sucked into the vortex of Endeavour’s flames. 

He still got weird about buildings almost falling. He knew it. Just one more speck of weird in the galaxy of weirdness that made up Shouta. He’d wait up here until his hands stopped shaking, and he could slip off into the shadows without risking dropping himself off a building and not managing to fly. 

Heavy footsteps hit the roof behind him with a roar of flame, a visceral heat that Shouta could feel through his jumpsuit as he stamped out the embers of his cigarette, fingers uncharacteristically clumsy as he pulled out the packet from one of his belt pouches. He turned. 

Endeavour didn’t even ask for a cigarette. Just held out a hand for the packet. Since Aizawa was fairly sure that the man could murder him even _with_ his quirk erased, he offered, wondering if the man could see Aizawa’s hands shaking, wondering if he knew why. Endeavour didn’t even need a light, just put it in his mouth and it was suddenly a burning coal. 

“You shouldn’t smoke these things,” said Endeavour, through his own breath of smoke.

“Give me a light,” said Aizawa, pulling out another. 

The man obliged with a fingertip, and Aizawa took a good strong breath of smoke into his lungs, enjoying the rasp of it in his throat. It was calming, the rush of nicotine in his system, the adrenaline drop from the fight and the aftermath. Endeavour held out his hand again. The guy’s lungs must be huge, Aizawa thought. How did fire quirks even affect the lungs? Did cigarettes do anything for him? 

Endeavour lit his second cigarette in as many minutes. 

“I hear you’re at Yuuei.” 

Shouta looked back at the street, at people starting to sweep up rubble. “Yeah.” 

“Good.” 

“Less competition for number one?” asked Shouta, and then wondered briefly if he had a deathwish that he hadn’t fully copped to. Endeavour made a noise that might have been a laugh, might have been a scoff. 

“You’ll never be number one,” he said. 

Eraserhead couldn’t think of anything worse than being number one. “True.” 

They smoked. It wasn’t companionable, except it was, and that was so weird that Aizawa was almost tempted to launch off the roof and fuck off into the aftermath of Endeavour’s massive blaze. He didn’t. He let Endeavour take another cigarette from the pack, hoping not to have to make small talk, and hoping that the guy was enough of an addict not to puke off the side of the building from the nicotine. 

“You teach heroics?” 

“Yeah.” What else was he going to teach, interpretive water ballet? Small talk. Illogical. The worst. 

“If a kid fucks up with their quirk,” said Endeavour, surprisingly quietly. “What do you do?” 

“Depends,” said Shouta. “Are they hurting themselves, or others? Or are they just going to learn a lesson from it?” 

Endeavour was silent for a second. “Isn’t that the same thing?” 

“I do anything necessary to keep them safe,” said Shouta, because fuck if that wasn’t well above his paygrade to untangle. He didn’t even feature in the hero rankings; if Endeavour wanted a confidante, he could have All Might or the Washing Machine or someone -- anyone -- else.

Endeavour shifted, slightly. He was a big man; threatening even when he was doing nothing. Shouta wondered, briefly, what training looked like for Endeavour. 

Endeavour broke the silence. “And if they died?”

“I’d never fucking forgive myself,” said Shouta, as more rubble fell to the street below, as his cigarette burned down to embers, and as Endeavour turned away from him, taking off without another word. 

5\. Noctilucent 

It was funny -- it wasn’t like Yuuei was too far from built-up areas, but there were still so many more stars visible from the roof than Shouta ever remembered there being when he was younger. He supposed that the inner city would do that to you -- keep an ever-present blanket of light between people and the sky, block it out and then make it more vivid when you saw it again. He didn’t know if it was better to forget and then remember, like a punch to the gut, or to just remember always, a slow, aching pain that never left. Maybe neither. 

Or both. 

He hadn’t thought he would come back to Yuuei. Blame that same hopelessly lacking self-preservation instinct. His arm was itchy under the nicotine patch that Nemuri and Hizashi had forced on him, and for an instant he was back ten years, back sitting on the roof with Oboro, making plans. But no. He was here, and everything had changed. Overhead, a noctilucent cloud reflected back the sun’s light as an electric blue and white even though the sky had begun to darken an hour ago. 

Maybe it hadn’t got the message. 

Fuck did he need a cigarette. His fingers, denied itching at his inner arm, toyed with his goggles instead. 

“Hey,” he said to the cloud. It moved like something alive -- he knew his cloud types, had done since he was a teenager and he befriended a cloud-quirked boy. He knew this was normal behaviour for this kind of conglomeration of ice crystals and light, though; even if it was at an abnormal latitude, and his throat ached, eyes burning. He brushed his fingers over the goggles again, gentler this time. 

“They might look different, but I’ve still got ‘em. Mic wears his shades, which is illogical, but he got the support guys to reinforce them so they’re functionally goggles. Marginally better. He’ll still lose an eye if someone hits him in the face.” 

Crying was illogical, too, and he refused to do it. 

“We’re all back at Yuuei,” said Shouta. “Me, Hizashi, Nem. Can you believe they let us teach? We’ve gotten fucking old.” 

Blue and white sparkled against the deepening night sky, and Shouta sat, leaning his back against the cold concrete. His breath fogged, if he concentrated enough to huff it out, as the chill settled into his bones. He watched the cloud iridesce against the velvet backdrop of night, and he didn’t say anything more, because it was a cloud, for fuck’s sake, and because there was so much he wanted to say that he didn’t know where to begin. Finally, darkness stole the cloud from him, so he sat and looked for stars, chin tucked into his capture weapon, its coils around his shoulders warm against the evening chill. Warm and secure, almost like he was being held. 

He shook off the feeling; scoffed at himself, quietly, and headed back downstairs. He didn’t have time for sentimentality; he had lessons to plan, student reports to write. He had responsibilities, the sort that came with getting too fucking old. 

Better than the alternative. He took one last look back at the sky, just in case, and then went out to save the world, one high-school kid at a time.


End file.
